Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Nativity pictures: Part two.

Nativity picturesLast week I finally finished the second part of the Nativity story which I intended finishing about this time last year! (My apologies). There are now 14 pictures covering the whole of the Nativity story. Part one is here.

There are 7 pictures in part two , which cover the visit of the wise men to the fleeing of Mary, Joseph and Jesus to Egypt. Part two of this story brings our total Bible picture count to 752.

Picture 8 shows the wise men arriving in the courtyard of Herod's Palace. Above the curved section of Roman columns you can see the Mariamme Tower. Out of the three towers that Herod had built, The Mariamme Tower was the most ornate. Josephus said "the king considering it appropriate that the tower named after a woman should surpass in decoration those called after men."
The tower is named after Herod's beloved Hasmonean wife Mariamme whom he had murdered!
Picture 9 (above) shows the wise men before Herod. Picture 10 shows Herod with his advisors. Picture 11 shows the wise men leaving the palace and the reappearance of the star! See the post 'Nazareth or Egypt' for more on this.

Picture 12 shows the wise men bringing gifts to the infant Jesus in a house, (not a stable). In picture 13 we see Joseph being warned in a dream to flee.
Picture 14 (right) we see Mary, Joseph and Jesus entering Egypt. I reconstructed the Sphinx to go in the back ground of this picture but decided that it was too busy!

Related posts:

Nativity pictures: Part one
Nazareth or Egypt?
Pictures of the Nativity
Drawing Angels!

2 comments:

deboraw said...

Yes, but 14 pictures! I wish I were only one year behind...very good Graham. Deboraw

Bible artist said...

It was about a week before Christmas last year, and I was 3 pictures short of finishing the second set! We new that there would be no demand for Nativity pictures until the following December, so I waited until last week to finish them!

Nativity pictures are a little like Christmas carols, they only get used one week of the year!! I don't know what it's like in the US, but in the UK most churches only have one carol service which lasts about an hour. It's impossible to sing all the great Christmas carols in an hour! All the supermarkets and shopping malls are playing Christmas music now, so why doesn't the Church? We've got a lot more to sing about too!